CARRY ON ABROAD 50 YEARS AGO!
The Carry On series of 31 British comedy films was released between 1958 and 1978, produced by Peter Rogers with director Gerald Thomas. The humour of Carry On was in the British comic tradition of music hall and bawdy seaside postcards.
The Carry On series contains the largest number of films of any British film series, and is the second longest running, albeit with a fourteen-year gap (1978–1992) between the 30th and 31st entries. All films were made at Pinewood Studios near Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire. Budgetary constraints meant that a large proportion of the location filming was undertaken close to the studios in and around south Buckinghamshire, including areas of Berkshire and Middlesex. However, by the late 1960s (at the height of the series’ success) more ambitious plots occasionally necessitated locations further afield, which included Snowdonia National Park, Wales (with the foot of Snowdon standing in for the Khyber Pass in Carry On Up the Khyber), and the beaches of the Sussex coast doubling as Saharan sand dunes in Follow That Camel! It’s 50 Years from the Spanish frolics of Carry On Abroad.. The film opens with pub landlord and frequent holidaymaker Vic Flange (Sid James) openly flirting with
the sassy saucepot widow Sadie Tompkins (Barbara Windsor) as his battleaxe wife, Cora (Joan Sims), looks on with disdain. Their twitching friend Harry (Jack Douglas), who is prone to elaborate and violent twitches, arrives and reveals that the package holiday Vic has booked to the Mediterranean island Elsbels (a pun on the slang expression “Hell’s Bells”) which is on the Costa Bomm, also includes Sadie, much to Cora’s outrage. Cora, who avoids holidays because she hates flying, suddenly decides to accompany her boorish husband on the trip, to ensure he keeps away from Sadie.
On May 13, 1967, Sid James suffered a severe heart attack. He was still lying bedridden in the hospital when the Carry On Doctor film was being filmed. He quit smoking cigarettes and instead smoked a pipe or an occasional cigar. The Heritage Foundation commemorative blue plaque for James was installed at the former Teddington Studios on Boom Road, Teddington, Greater London.
